Thanksgiving Morning Waffles

This past Thanksgiving morning I woke up with a craving for freshly baked belgian waffles. I hadn’t made any in a while and thought it would make for a nice breakfast. The Professor wholeheartedly agreed. To make the waffles a little interesting I decided to use some apples that had been hanging out in the kitchen since the previous Sunday evening. They were heirloom apples. I had never, at least as far as I could remember, seen heirloom apples before running into them at Balducci's in Chelsea. We decided to shop for dinner there after seeing an afternoon showing of The Last King of Scotland at the Quad Cinema. It was right across the street from where the car was parked so it was the logical choice for picking up ingredients for dinner, a veggie ragu inspired by Heat that the Professor planned on making. While looking for tomatoes, olives, capers and other various things I ran into these little baskets filled with little specimens of fruit. What were they? Tiny pears? Color wise they certainly looked like pears, but the shape was all wrong. They looked more like, like what? The little sign beneath the little baskets filled with the little fruit clued me in. Heirloom apples it said. Intrigued, I bought a basket.

I wasn’t exactly sure what I‘d do with them. I thought I might bake them, perhaps core them and fill them with brown sugar and butter and sprinkle cinnamon over them. Of course I had no idea how that would turn out. But I was curious. I had never baked apples before. As it turned out I was being a little overly ambitious that day. By the time we drove all the way back up to my place, prepared dinner and made our first attempt at baking bread (from a no knead recipe in the dining section of the Times that turned out not half bad) baking little apples was the last thing I wanted to do. The night before we had discovered the joys of port over vanilla ice cream and decided to have it again. Laziness won over that night.

So the apples never got baked and were just sitting there in the kitchen waiting to be used somehow. Why not integrate them into that morning’s waffle experience? I figured it would be relatively easy. Simply cut them into slices and sauté them in butter with a little brown sugar and cinnamon thrown in at some point. It did indeed turn out to be simple. The only problem I ran into was that after slicing the apples and started the heating of the pan I looked into the fridge only to discover that I was completely out of butter. “Oh no!” I thought. How can I possibly sauté these apples and make a proper Belgian waffle topping without butter? Is such a thing even possible? Vegetable oil was quickly substituted for butter. I honestly didn’t think my waffle topping would come out very well without butter but is it turns out heirloom apples thinly sliced and sautéed in a bit of vegetable oil with some cinnamon sprinkled in makes quite a nice topping. The slight tartness of the apples combined very nicely with the sweetness of the maple syrup which I warmed before pouring over the apple topped waffle. I loved the simplicity and downright yumminess of the dish that morning.

The waffles themselves I decided to make from scratch rather than one of the mixes I had hanging out in the pantry. If making the batter from scratch is just as easy as using a mix why not? I used to use this recipe all the time a few years ago. Then, after not baking any waffles for quite sometime the neurons that contained the memory of the recipe atrophied, shriveled and died. It’s the only reason that I can think of as to why I forgot what’s probably one of the easiest recipes around. That’s why I had some of the mixes hanging out in my pantry, because I simply couldn’t remember how to make waffles and pancakes from scratch. I looked up recipes online but there were just too many to choose from. I was ashamed. But this Thanksgiving morning inspiration struck. Perhaps it was that morning’s meditation session, which was particularly deep (ok, deep for me. I’m sure even a novice Zen Buddhist monk achieves much deeper levels of meditative bliss regularly, while shopping no less, than I did that morning, but still).

I suddenly remembered that all I really needed was flour, milk, an egg, some baking powder, a little sugar, some cinnamon and perhaps a drop or two of vanilla extract. If waffles are being made a little oil is mixed in. Easy. Just as important as the ingredients I also remembered the ratios and measurements I used to use. One cup of flour, one cup of milk, perhaps a little more if the batter was a little too thick, somewhere in the vicinity of 3/4ths a tablespoon of baking powder, a few dashes of cinnamon and a little vanilla. A while back a coworker and I were talking about mixing batters for pancakes and waffles and he told me the proper way to do it was to mix the wet and dry ingredients separately first and then mix them together. I forgot what the reason was and will have to look that up. Even without knowing why I mixed the batter that way, putting the flour, baking powder and cinnamon together in one bowl and the vanilla soy milk (yes soy milk!) and egg in another. Oh, and speaking of milk, I’ve made this recipe using whole milk, skim milk, buttermilk (yum!!!), plain soy milk and vanilla soy milk and the end results have always ended up good. There were slight differences in flavor and feel but no matter which variation I’ve used I’ve always been quite pleased with the results. This past batch of waffles, using vanilla soy milk and topped with sautéed cinnamon heirloom apples and warm maple syrup was good, good, good. The professor was quite pleased with them as well which made the whole effort (which was admittedly not a whole lot) more than worth it. When my girlfriend gave me that big beautiful smile of hers after taking her first bite life was indeed good. I knew the rest of the day would be perfect, and it indeed was.